Implementing Perl 6... and other related technologies.

2006.11.04

OOPSLA/DLS and the upcoming POPL 2007.

The Belknap Jifty Hackathoners left Portland right after the Pugs talk, so my attendance in this year's OOPSLA/DLS lasted for exactly one hour. However, that was one of the most intense hours in my life, and I'm glad that I emerged alive (and happy).

As is customary by now, before the talk went live, I put the Irssi window to #perl6 on the projector, showing the continuous works from the lambdacamels. Since both Vim and Irssi windows were maximized, and MiniBufExpl's color theme matched that of Irssi's, it apparently created the impression that Vim is my IRC client of choice... :-)

The talk itself went very well. With 240 slides (designed as 12 lightning talks of 5 minutes each), for the first time I've delivered them in just under 50 minutes, leaving plenty of time for questions. Those were substantial questions that challenged almost all parts of Perl 6 and Pugs... Unlike any other Q&A session in my talks before, this one strongly resembled a thesis defense.

I'll post a separate blog entry, perhaps in the form of a Perl6::FAQ document, to address those questions about our type system, module system, introspection, parallelism, and other high-level design issues.

After the talk, Felleisen asked me if I'd like to present Pugs at POPL'07, and I said I'd be interested, as it's the conference where most lambdafolks unleash the latest language-design hackerys. A few days later, I was extremely surprised (and honored) when he informed me that Perl 6 will be the invited opening talk (!).

Last year, that place was held by Odersky's great Scala talk, which influenced the design of Pugs in many ways. So I'll be very, very happy if our unorthodox ideas in Perl 6 can also inspire POPL folks as much as they have inspired us. See you at the Nice hackathon in January! :-)